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3 thoughts on “Sunday’s Sermon”

It has been my experience that people need spirituality in their lives; at least that I need sprituality in my life. Without it, a loss of meaning and connection occurs. However, this need and fulfillment has been found (to a greater degree of late) in other ways beyond more traditonal and widespread ‘religion’. I know it has for me.

I knew I was major pissed off at our local Mennonite minister (who is a friend of mine, by the way) when he pontificated one day about how families needed to look after their elders as opposed to making assisted living arrangements. While he was going ‘off’ I flashed back on when my mom had a fall 8 years ago due to her Alzheimers, and how I had to spend the next two weeks diapering and trying to feed her until we could obtain an emergency placement at a local VIHA facility. The nurses at Emergency told me to, “Just leave her here in Emergency and walk away”. But no, in shifts we did what we could and I don’t think I slept for the entire two weeks. As my minister friend expounded on his theories I experienced several revelations, (excuse the Sunday/Biblical pun). One, I asked myself how many diapers he had changed for his mom?, and knew that in a similar situation his wife would be doing all the changing for sure! Two, how on earth has he evolved in his discourse to simply expound on his ideas as if they were undeniably and obviously true and most right? Then, it hit me. Every Sunday this man has been standing in front of our local congregation doing same, and it has been received and reinforced over and over by an intent and focused listenening audience. Coupled with the fact that he absolutely believes with all his heart that the Bible is the literal word of God, and that its wisdom is filtered and flowing out of his lips and into the ears and soul of his parishoners, well….a lot of ‘bad habits’ have been allowed to metastisize.

I accept the organized “Day of Worship” is well intentioned and something people need. However, I have decided for now and in future to say Grace and Give Thanks in my mind, privately, and to myself throughout the day and when it strikes me to do so.

Some of you may be interested in the linked article. From same: “Looking at this progression, the Dalai Lama’s words came back to me. The animating force behind life simplification has gone from religious to secular, from ethics to optimizing and minimizing, from values (morality) to value (more for less).”

Thanks for your thoughts, Paul. Your words remind me once again why I thought you were an excellent student back in those early days in Arts 1. I believe that “How many diapers have you changed for your Mom?” is an excellent response to all who disappear into another imagined world peopled with beings who never need them.

There are, I have learned, a number of ways to connect to something larger than ones own ego. (I remember for example my days in mathematics when a great feeling came from solving problems by suddenly SEEING the solution. Or, in philosophy when suddenly understanding “the Absurd” in a profound way, or in literature when seeing suddenly beyond the words on the page the “vision of life” that the author was presenting.) People have done so for centuries by imagining an “other world” with gods, spirits, angels, etc. – untouched by shit. But, of course, we live and die in this world – witness to acts of good and evil and to the overwhelming power of nature.

As much as I continue to bristle at the name “The Brights” I do agree with the vision:Our nations, cultures, politics, genders, occupations, interests, and so on differ widely. However, we are generally “in sync” with one another because we share a worldview that is free from supernatural and mystical elements. We are set apart in a broad sense from those who have worldviews that embrace such elements, whether entities such as deities, or forces, or both. Most of us find our naturalistic worldview regarding “ultimate beliefs” marginalized in the society in which we live (perhaps utterly disparaged, or even proscribed). Our common interest is to work in varied ways to change this situation for the better. Persons are not excluded from the Brights by politics or other characteristics.

Humanist Perspectives

Nietzsche

Fallacies

John Dominic Crossan

“Just because the Bible says “Jesus is the Lamb of God,” it doesn’t follow that Mary had a little lamb.”

Richard Dawkins: Unweaving the Rainbow

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats. scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumber the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Words to live by – Douwe Stuurman

what you will love mostis to walkon the earth

Story

Grow a Soul

“One of the attractions of the UU approach to religion and life is caught in the assertion that divinity and spirit are to be found not through blind faith but through finding and sending down roots to the deepest part of one’s unique self. As is true in botany, those roots spread out into the wider community and can nourish us and give us a healthy life. How do we know when we are living in the best place for those roots to grow? In so much as we do indeed “grow a soul” we should consider carefully the garden in which that soul grows.” - Bob Lane

Albert Camus

“For a generous psychology.

We help a person more by giving him a favorable image of himself than by constantly reminding him of his shortcomings. Each individual normally strives to resemble his best image. Can be applied to teaching, to history, to philosophy, to politics. We are for instance the result of twenty centuries of Christian imagery. For two thousand years man has been offered a humiliating image of himself. The result is obvious. Anyway, who can say what we should be if those twenty centuries had clung to the ancient ideal with its beautiful human face.” Albert Camus — Notebooks

Bertrand Russell

When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. And if we are to live together and not die together, we should learn the kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Julius Caesar Lecture

Religion

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. -Albert Einstein

Bible Lecture

Reading the Bible FREE

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On Existence

Dad?

Pindar

“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life,

but exhaust the limits of the possible”.

Archives

Archives

Philosophy on Facebook

Samuel Beckett – words

“You must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
(Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, 1959, p.418)